The front lawns of Sydney University are bustling with activity today, as the campus readies itself for O Week (short for Orientation Week, even though it only lasts 3 days), setting up stalls and tents as best they can amidst the rain (don’t be fooled by the beautiful blue skies in the photo, they were extremely fleeting). For the last few months the campus has been quiet, largely devoid of students and even of many academic staff – although the tourists have been out in full force. O Week begins tomorrow to officially welcome a new crop of students to the university, although the campus is already getting busier, as international students arrive early to begin to get their bearings, and academics return to their offices. Today there’s a feeling of anticipation, as we prepare for the campus to overflow once again.

Looking over my blog posts for the past 9 months, I can see that many of them are marked by the comings and goings of staff and students around me, and the rhythms of the academic year. These rhythms have to an extent defined my time throughout my PhD research, and yet I’ve also felt somewhat detached from, particularly in the semesters when I haven’t been teaching. Staff and students come and go around us with the schedule of lectures and study breaks and exams and holidays, but in our little corner of the campus, we research postgrads are still here, day after day. Although soon, that too will change – just as thousands of new students are preparing to begin their degrees, I’m coming tantalisingly close to submitting my thesis to the university where I first enrolled almost exactly 11 years ago.

Coming full circle, but also moving on. My first blog post was written after seeing a film, and completely unintentionally, so is my last.

Growing up I could never really understand why other children would watch films over and over again. This seemed totally alien to me, but there was one film that I could watch repeatedly and every time I would hold my breath, wondering how it was going to end… In fact, if I watch it now, I still do wonder! That film was Apollo 13.

I was reminded of it last night while I was in the cinema watching Hidden Figures, probably because of the space race element to it. But I also sat there thinking – very rarely for me – I want to watch this again.

Although this time it wasn’t because of the dramatic tension, but because of the inspirational traits of the three main women in it. And how with intelligence, perseverance and humility they helped to shape science and advance human knowledge. Not only that, but they did it at a time when prejudice and sterotyping was an overt and instutitionalised brick wall. They chipped away it until it slowly crumbled. But it also took people who could see beyond colour, race and gender – people who believed in them.

Whilst there are big messages we can take from the film in light of the barriers that are rising in our society today around crossing borders and #womeninsceince, for me the big message was abut belief: the belief these women had in their own abilities, in each other’s abilities and the belief others had in them.

Needed a change of scene so have drifted back to my parents house to write. And it’s blogging day (for the last time) so I thought, let’s do a material culture sweep of the back yard in the drap month of February!

And sure enough, I discovered some forgotten, leaf tangled secrets in the undergrowth. Garden furniture is either bemusing or just…awful. I hope my mum never reads this.

(Ps. I NEVER instagram or filter photos but, because this IS a sentimental garden, thought I’d go all out.)

What is with the marbles?

Remenents of my sister’s art project in flowerpots…concrete milk & washing up bottles…I’m going to ask her about them

Statue to all the late cats we’ve known

This one time, my youngest sister took a massive run into the garden, all the way down the path and headbutted the bird table. Which broke. Dad fixed it pretty well considering #familysaga.

Obsolete blueish paraphanelia

Need a hand? This guy is supposed to be the wish granting goblin thing in Five Children & It

As I write this, my last post for the Human Seasons, the days are stretching. Climatically, if not geopolitically, the darkest days are behind us.

In terms of human culture, there’s no better way to celebrate and channel light than through stained glass. A few weeks ago I was in the Sainte Chapelle, the world’s greatest light box. This week I was in the Cavendish Arcade, a sort of Georgian shopping mall in Buxton, where the stained glass is more modest but still throws the light into the space, enriched with new colours.

But material culture, no matter how elegant, is not what gladdens the heart most. I’ve realised that time and again during this project. The action of walking in a landscape, the unchangeable qualities of water and air, the sharing of good company from one end of the year to the next, are what make the seasons human.

It’s my last post for The Human Seasons, and what a year it has been. I’ve published some posts under the influence of morphine, some under the influence of singing induced endorphins, and now I can happily say I’m writing under the heady influence of spring.

Thank you for having me, and here’s a gorgeous spring filled song with Sussex connections (collected by Bob Copper from “Jim” Swain in 1954). I learnt it from Shirley Collins’ album ‘Adieu to Old England’. It transpires that I misheard one of the lyrics but I’m keeping it in – it’s the folk process, after all. The Dovetail Trio do a stunning rendition of this song, there’s a link to a video of them performing it on the Mainly Norfolk page for this song (and a comprehensive recording history).

It’s my final post today and I’m back in Ironbridge prepping time-space budget surveys for this afternoon. I will be asking people on their way back to their cars if they would tell me where they’ve been during their visit, and how long it took them. I’ve been looking back over my posts from the last year – 18 snapshots illustrating how what I do in a space transforms my experience of it. For the people I’m surveying this week I imagine a car park probably just means a place to leave the car. For me it is a challenging environment where I have to find a location which is not in the way (of pedestrians and cars) but from which I can spot people who look like they may be leaving and get to them without scaring them off by running headlong across the car park waving a clipboard and yelling ‘wait’!

Looking back over my previous posts I can see it is my sixth post from Ironbridge, my field site, matching six posts from Birmingham where I live and have my office. There were also nine posts from other places where I’ve visited for work or holidays. Two posts came from conferences (in Orkney and Nottingham) while others came from trips to Sweden, Northumbria and Canterbury as well as trips home to my parents in Lincolnshire. This seems like a fairly accurate reflection of my year, although probably under-represents the amount of time I’ve spent sat at a desk! I guess on those days I managed to find things I perceived as being more interesting from my environment. While not a mis-representation it is intriguing that I didn’t want to keep showing pictures of a desktop computer. I wonder if this is something we all do when talking about our work – not necessarily trying to make it sound more ‘out there’ than it is exactly, but certainly downplaying the more mundane aspects. Perhaps boring is more truthful!